


How To Tell If You're Alive

by Artemis1000



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Espionage, First Meetings, Interrogation, M/M, One Lives/Everybody Else Dies, Relationship Development, Snapshots, Survivor Guilt, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-10 09:23:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11688726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: The first time Cassian Andor meets Han Solo it is in a smuggler's bar, and he doesn't meet Cassian at all.Three years later, he introduces Han to Fulcrum in an interrogation room, and burns him with frost.It will be three more years till he calls him lover. Sometimes it takes a little longer. Sometimes you won't dare cling to what remains till everything else is lost.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



The first time they meet it’s in a cantina in the Outer Rim, a watering hole on a rotting space station that used to be an ore refinery, once upon a time. Now it’s just another unimportant hive of scum and villainy.

Cassian hunches over the grimy bar, elbow planted into a puddle of frothy blue liquid, other hand nudging his half-empty glass this way and that way. He’s the picture of relaxed boredom – just a little bit too bored not to betray that he’s faking it, but close enough that it would pass muster anywhere but with this jaded crowd.

If he weren’t on duty, he would treat himself to a drink for that. Good acting is easy. If all it took to be a spy is flawless acting skills, Intel would be doing their recruiting at the Coruscant School for the Performing Arts.

At 20, Cassian’s too young, his face too boyish-sweet to play the part of the hard-boiled scoundrel convincingly. Besides, people like it when they can look at you and pat themselves on the back because you’re good, but they’re better, smarter, half a step ahead of you. People who are pleased with themselves are easier to manipulate. Happens to be that being underestimated makes finishing it off easier, too.

He checks the time and permits a scowl to creep onto his face.

Nobody’s ever on time these days.

Cassian takes another sip, body shifting slightly when a young female Rodian squeezes past him a little too close, his hand dropping from his glass towards the visibly-concealed blaster he carries under his jacket. The glare he shoots the Rodian makes her think twice about that jostle-you-and-pick-your-pocket maneuver she’d been about to try, and she scampers away with an annoyed huff.

There’s a chuckle from the man sitting two seats away, and Cassian turns his scowl briefly on him before he returns his attention to his glass.

“She tries that with every pretty face,” the man drawls, “but ones as pretty as you, they get the special treatment on her good days.”

“Hmm,” is all Cassian says, but somehow the implied _go away_ must have gotten lost in translation and turned into _please tell me more_ by the time it reached the human’s ears, for he switches to the chair right next to Cassian’s.

Cassian doesn’t need to bother with sizing him up now, he’s long ago finished his threat assessment. Human, white male, a couple of years older than him. Between the speech, the mannerism and the choice of his drink, he’s willing to bet good credits on Corellian, or dedicated enough to playing the part that it doesn’t make a difference to Cassian. Smuggler, or a bounty hunter with solid acting skills.

Cassian is long since done sizing him up, but Jorik Amar isn’t. So Cassian sends him covert peeks from the corner of his eyes, trying very hard not to let on that he’s looking for weapons in particular, and once again just falling short at his attempt at subterfuge.

“Not interested?” the man asks, smirking at him.

“No.” There. Look at him being honest.

He echoes Cassian’s earlier, “hmm,” but of course he isn’t going to leave it well enough alone, Cassian hadn’t expected him to. “Is it because she’s Rodian or a woman?”

Not unexpected, either, except in that it’s more tactful than the _how much by the hour?_ Cassian had expected. If you’re not here to pick up jobs as a smuggler or a bounty hunter, chances are good you’re here for a different line of work.

Cassian doesn’t smile, no, he thins his lips in annoyance, though well-hidden in his own mind amusement flares up. He permits himself a moment to play out in his mind this scene with him being his real self, and a speech on Rebel Alliance values including the fight against speciesism.

“Neither nor. But I’m not here for fun.” The man’s still smirking with such self-confidence, and sizing him up with too blatant interest that Cassian almost adds _unless I’m getting paid for it_. Just because he’s curious what price he could demand for something a handsome, smooth-talking scoundrel like him could get for free in a place like this, and because he feels morbid curiosity what value he has when it isn’t as a weapon. But then he’d have to extricate himself before he has to deliver, and there’s no point in adding complications to a simple mission just because he’s bored and this man’s swagger could do with a blow to his pride.

The smuggler leans in closer, not in a way to crowd or intimidate, but just to instill a sense of familiarity which doesn’t exist. He’s still smirking that infuriating smirk. “Good thing I’ve found you. Bringing the fun’s one of my specialties.”

Cassian properly looks up for the first time and forgets Jorik Amar’s incredulity in favor of his own. “That’s possibly the most terrible pick-up line I’ve ever heard.”

The Corellian grins at him as if he’s won the Kessel Run. “But it got your attention, didn’t it?”

He looks so kriffing pleased with himself. Cassian wants to shoot him. He also wants to tip his nonexistent hat to him because damn it all, but it had worked. He tips his glass instead.

“I’m Han.”

“Jorik.” He lets a heartbeat pass. “And I’m not here for fun. Not even for yours.” Cassian follows that up with a pointed look.

“Sure you’re not,” Han agrees easily, and leans back, letting his eyes wander through the cantina. “But the way I see it, you’ve been sitting here all alone waiting for two drinks, and whoever you’re waiting for still isn’t here. If you’re going to be bored on your own, you might as well…”

“…be bored by you?”

Han’s jaw drops, and Cassian would bet it’s at most 70% affectation. “Ouch. Right to the heart.”

“Hm.” He takes another sip, though it’s mostly to keep his hands busy.

Han’s flirtations are a distraction. Cassian’s on a routine mission, but he still can’t afford a distraction, least of all when he can’t tell if he’s deliberately distracting him. Cassian could shut him down brutally. It’s nothing he hasn’t done before, both on missions and on base. And yet…

“If you’re easily bored, reckon I shouldn’t ask if you come here often, or if you’d like a tour of my ship, starting with my bunk.” He leans back, looking mightily pleased with himself for being too nonchalant even to bother with pick-up lines.

Cassian forces a flush to his cheeks. Jorik Amar would be flustered by such blatant flirting. So would Cassian Andor, but he would react to being flustered with scathing disapproval and reprimands about adhering to military protocol.

“No, you shouldn’t,” he says, and lets some of that disapproval show because _really_.

“It’s a terrible line. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it work on anyone who doesn’t get paid to be wowed, but I could name you at least five blokes in this cantina who got slapped for it. Three more who got shot.”

Cassian’s lips quirk. “And yet they keep using it.”

“We’re scoundrels. We’ve got to believe luck’s on our side.”

“So what would you say instead?”

“I don’t know, but so far annoying you is working just fine.”

“You could upgrade to insults and see if that gets you shot,” Cassian suggests, ever so helpfully.

“Nah. You’re the sulky type. You’d just go quiet and broody. That’s no fun.”

“I’d go quiet and broody once I’m done chewing you out.” Cassian would. Jorik… He never had to decide what would be in-character for Jorik, but looks like his slip of the tongue has made the decision for him.

“How about I buy you another drink and you tell me why you’re here.”

Cassian shoots him an unimpressed look. “How about no. That’s a rotten deal.”

Han shrugs, and accepts the rebuke far more gracefully than Cassian had expected. Just like he’s taken every blow gracefully. Then again, Cassian’s still talking to him. That’s not exactly shutting him down hard.

It’s more like playing hard to get. Is he flirting back?

A surge of panic wells up in Cassian at the thought. Flirting back had never been part of the deception.

A shot glass bumps into Cassian’s elbow, and his hand jerks forward to steady it before anything can spill. While Cassian was quietly panicking and reviewing his behavior to pinpoint just when he had deviated from his plan, Han had gotten them another round of drinks.

Cassian doesn’t drink.

Han watches him for a few moments before he heaves an aggravated sigh and takes a sip from Cassian’s glass. “Here you go. Happy now?”

Cassian considers the glass thoughtfully, and lists poisons in his mind. “Maybe.”

“You think you’re important enough to get poisoned by someone who thinks of dosages?”

Yes. No. Maybe. Who knows how much the Empire would pay for an up-and-coming Rebel Intelligence agent.

“Probably not,” he decides, and empties the glass in one go. “Poisoners are expensive.”

Han laughs, and empties his own glass in companionable silence.

“You sure you won’t be coming back to my bunk?” he murmurs, his voice the softest Cassian has heard it yet.

At any other time Cassian would have snapped and barked at him, or made him the fourth man in the room to get shot for that line, but there’s something about the way Han is looking at him… Cassian doesn’t like it, or how it makes him feel. 

Deep space can get very lonely. He would rather leave it at that and not look any further.

He weighs and rejects all the scathing retorts he has primed, and shakes his head instead. “I’m not here for fun.”

Han looks like _but what if you were?_ is at the top of his tongue. Maybe he doesn’t want to let on that he cares about the answer, or maybe he is really worried about a blaster bolt to the groin, but he doesn’t ask.

Cassian nudges the empty shot glass around. “Han who?”

His drinking companion perks up. “Han Solo. Captain of the Millennium Falcon.” Coming from him, it sounds like this should have meaning to Cassian.

It doesn’t. “I haven’t heard of you.”

“Give it a couple of years, and you will. I’ll make the Kessel Run, shorter than anyone else ever did it.”

There’s a fire in Han’s eyes which makes Cassian want to believe him. He scoffs. “And then you’d bed me on roses?”

“More like dirty, oily rags. There’s always something to repair on a smuggler’s ship and no roses, but the Falcon’s still the best ship in the galaxy.”

Cassian half-stifles a snort. The amusement shows in his eyes. “How romantic.”

Han rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I bet you’re a real sucker for romance.”

They share a grin.

It isn’t until later that Cassian will realize he had at some point stopped choosing everything he said or did for maximum effect.

Cassian leans closer, a challenge in his eyes. “What if I am?”

It’s Han’s turn to look taken aback, which only adds to the sweet feeling of triumph Cassian is feeling at having gained the upper hand.

“I want roses,” he declares and drains the contents of his refilled shot glass in one go.

“With thorns?”

“Of course.”

“Prickly.”

Cassian permits himself to look smug.

There’s something about the smuggler’s charm that makes him want to forget that he doesn’t want to care. They’ve been moving closer and closer, their heads now tucked together with real, unforced familiarity – or a wish for it, at least, a mutual desire to pretend just for here and now.

Of course, good things can never last.

There’s a commotion by the entrance, and when Cassian throws a glance over his shoulder, he’s jerked back into reality.

The Twi’lek he’s come to meet is in the process of loudly greeting his fellow bounty hunters.

Cold slams into him, and chases away every trace of the warmth Han has awoken in him.

Cassian is done here. Time to get on with his mission, extricate himself, return to base, get the next mission. Time to remember that he may be able to play pretend so well he can fool even himself, but it can never last.

It only takes the way Han is looking at him to know he isn’t done with him yet. That’s the problem with smugglers. They can’t resist the lure of a hefty prize, and if there’s a chase involved, all the better.

He stifles a sigh. The last thing Cassian needs is some little smuggler in puppy love with him, asking all the wrong questions.

He leans in close, hands on the counter, pinning Han between his arms, and for the first time tonight, he chooses to peel back the mask.

“Look, this has been fun,” he says, his voice voice hard now, military-clipped in the manner he has been adopting from General Draven, “but I don’t know what you’re playing at, Han. I’m not looking for a small-time captain’s cock to suck. Sorry if I made you think otherwise.”

He walks away.

The cold stays with him.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time they meet, Cassian is clad in rebel tans.

He is three years older, his baby face contoured by a mustache and stubble. As he steps into the bleak interrogation room, there’s no boyish warmth to his eyes, no relaxation found in his body language, neither carefully faked nor otherwise.

The small room holds a table and two chairs and nothing else. The smuggler’s ankles are cuffed to the chair legs, his wrists to the table.

He looks pissed.

“Now look here, you son of a…” Han Solo starts off as soon as the door opens.

Cassian doesn’t look at him till the door has sealed shut behind him. “Mynock? Bantha? Tairn? Personally, I prefer Barve. It’s two insults for the price of one, and I like efficiency.”

“Slorth!” Solo spits.

Cassian acknowledges his choice with a curt nod. He doesn’t sit, just places himself behind his chair and rests his hands on the back of the chair. “I’m Fulcrum. Do you understand why you’re here, Han Solo?”

“Because you’re a bunch of karking-mad fanatics going around willy-nilly kidnapping an honest smuggler?” Solo goads, his voice somewhere between mocking singsong and spitting the words at him.

Cassian does appreciate multitasking. He can respect that.

He makes a point of taking note of the man’s bleeding upper lip and cut eyebrow. He had put up a fight every step of the way. Cassian had appreciated that, too, watching the surveillance tapes. “We’ll provide you with bacta once you have been returned to your cell.”

Solo meets his eyes. “You shouldn’t.”

Cassian doesn’t arch a brow, but he lets curiosity show in his eyes. Curiosity, and a wordless demand for answers. No, not a demand. Demands come from people who expect they need to make demands. He is simply awaiting the answers due to him.

“No point wasting good bacta on a dead man.”

He presses his lips together in faint disdain. “How melodramatic.”

Solo leans back as far as his chained hands will permit. In Cassian’s mind, he lets the movement come to its logical conclusion – Solo lazily leaning back, arms crossed behind his head as if he has no care in the world. In reality, he’s still slightly hunched forward, and far removed from a posture of cocky self-assurance.

“What?” he asks, matching Cassian’s disdain beat for beat, “Are you going to tell me you won’t kill me once you’re done, code name Fulcrum with the pretty brown eyes and memorable face?”

“Actually, it’s the accent that is most memorable,” Cassian points out, “but I’ll give you that a photofit sells better to ISB. If you’re going for the aesthetics of cheap spy dramas, that is.”

Cassian takes the time Solo spends stewing in indignation to sit down.

Solo has aged, too, though not as visibly as Cassian has. There’s not so much change between 23 and 26 as between 20 and 23. They have both grown far more jaded than older, anyway.

“No recording? Is this just a cozy reunion between you and me then, Jorik?”

Solo’s arrogance is sharper now, acerbic even in the almost-flirty-but-certainly-insulting tilt of his chin. Or maybe he’d always been that way and he had been a far better actor in that cantina than Cassian had given him credit for. Cassian takes note that he dislikes this possibility.

He also takes note he’s never denied that Solo will die once Cassian is done with him. He chooses not to rectify that.

“I have been watching you since you were led into this room.”

Han’s smile is all teeth. “Dragged. The word you’re looking for is dragged, sweetheart.”

Cassian meets his smile with one of his own, bland and lifeless, and intended exactly as such. “It was your choice to disobey.” He lets that hang between them, lets it melt and merge with the implied promise of death.

This would be a good time to leave, and let possibilities fester in the captive’s mind.

Cassian doesn’t want to leave.

He’s never liked unfinished business. If he is going to pick at this scab, he might as well keep going till it bleeds.

“I’m going to ask you a number of questions pertaining your last run now. As you know, it ended with you entering one of our supply stations, and consequently being detained for questioning. In the interest of saving us both some time, I suggest you refrain from answering any question with _I don’t remember_. You have just proven that your memory works fine.”

Unprofessional, a little voice that sounds suspiciously like General Draven’s hisses at the back of his mind, and he knows it is. But Han Solo had remembered. It had taken barely a minute to recognize a man he’d met in a cantina once, three years ago.

Solo shifts now, as much as the shackles permit. Cassian would say it’s in discomfort, but then he rolls his eyes and huffs, and the lines between pretense and reality blur too much for Cassian to trust himself that he could properly pinpoint them.

“Alright. It’s the accent. Not often you meet a nice Festan like you in a place as seedy as that one.”

He’s still smirking in that infuriating way that twists everything into an insult, but Cassian wonders if he’d ever looked for Jorik when he returned. If he had ever returned. Cassian would have, if K-2SO’s calculations hadn’t resulted in a disheartening 2,3% likelihood of successfully recruiting him for the Rebellion.

Cassian lets some smugness show on his face. “Told you.”

Should Draven decide that he must indeed die, Cassian is going to inform him of his fate with finest Coruscant twang to his voice. He would rather think of that than the order itself, anyway.

Silence settles heavy between them.

To an intelligence agent, silence is a familiar old friend. Cassian welcomes it.

He’s got all the time in the world. Han Solo’s chances of making it out alive decrease with every hour in captivity, statistically speaking.

He wonders if Han has read the statistics, and decides he hasn’t. Chances are that he knows anyway, that he feels the truth of it in his bones.

“So? What now?” Solo finally blurt outs.

“Now you’re going to tell me how you came to trespass on our base.”

Han laughs harshly. “ISB would be proud to have you, sweetheart.”

“No. But they would be lucky to have me.”

They meet another’s eyes, both equally stubborn, neither willing to budge an inch.

Cassian folds his hands on the table, the very picture of placid professionalism. “I assume you feel safe, knowing we reject a number of torture methods employed by the Empire. What you don’t seem to understand is that this leaves me with a considerable number of options.”

“So? It doesn’t matter what I tell you, you won’t believe me.”

That is true, yet the accusation makes something hurt and bitter well up in him anyway. He presses his lips together, and moves on. An interrogating agent isn’t entitled to feelings.

“I’ll have your story verified.”

“Fine.” There’s something distinctly mutinous about Han’s body language as he leans forward, a challenge in his eyes. “At a cantina on Tatooine, I heard rumors about an abandoned supply depot from the Clone Wars. My partner’s been in bacta for weeks, I needed a quick, easy job I could do by myself. Turns out it wasn’t abandoned anymore, you’d revived it as one of your secret stashes.” He shoots him a quizzical look. “Now look into my eyes and tell me you believe a single word I said.”

It sounds like an excuse. He doesn’t need K-2SO’s processor to tell him the overwhelming likelihood of it being an excuse.

He also doesn’t want to prove himself the man Han sees when he looks at him. Even though late at night, when he has nothing but his doubts for company, Cassian judges himself just as harshly as Han does.

For a moment he wonders, if he’d seen Han again three years ago, would he have judged him just as harshly?

“I’ll have your story verified,” he repeats, his voice just as icy and clipped as before.

He stands up.

“So…” Han’s drawl is mocking. “Let’s say you get it _verified_. Are you going to kill me once you have what you need, Fulcrum?”

Cassian turns around again, meets his eyes. His gaze is placid and betrays none of the turmoil raging in him. “In that case, I suggest you sell my face to ISB. You can’t give them anything they don’t know already, but if they don’t kill you they will pay you well.”

He turns on his heel and walks out while Han is still bellowing demands at him.

He tells himself he won’t look back. He tells himself he won’t watch as they drag Han out of the base, already abandoned except for the handful of people who had remained for the interrogation, and leave him to find his own fate. He most certainly doesn’t let himself consider what will happen if Han’s story is proven a lie. (It isn’t.)

He does keep tab on his ISB profile.

To his best knowledge, Han Solo never approaches the Imperial Security Bureau.

Cassian Andor tells himself that is enough for him, and moves on.


	3. Chapter 3

“Cassian.”

Han’s voice reaches him sluggishly, making its way past the roaring of Jedha and Scarif’s destruction, past the dying screams of his comrades. Most of these dying screams he’d never heard outside his nightmares, they died at the beach or in the sky while he was in the tower. He doesn’t need memories. He’s heard enough dying screams that his nightmares can deduce what his friends’ would have sounded like.

“Cassian.” Han’s arms tighten around him. He pulls him up, into a sitting position, and murmurs nothing but soothing nonsense as he lets Cassian bury his face into the crook of his neck.

He rocks him gently, and Cassian digs his nails into his back till he draws blood.

There are fingers in his hair now, their tight and clumsy grip betraying that Han is as foreign to such affection as Cassian is, but he is here, he is trying, and that is the only thing that matters.

He feels sloppy kisses pressed to the top of his head, and smiles a little – a little bitterly, too, because Han is never quite so affectionate when Cassian isn’t falling apart. Of course, any other time, Cassian wouldn’t permit it. They are at war, and he can’t afford weakness.

But late at night weakness is all he has, and he lets Han hold him, lets his voice wash over him and drown out the screams.

They lay in darkness for the longest time, Cassian’s eyes wide open though there is nothing to see. He listens to the pounding of his own heartbeat, studies the shortness of his breath, the sickening tightness in his belly that is all pure dread. Acknowledges the panicky need to run away from his own thoughts, escape his body, his mind, his fears, and the certainty that no matter how far he runs, he will never run far or fast enough to escape them.

You can’t escape your shadows. He knows. He has tried.

Han pulls away before Cassian gets the chance to push him away. He does so on most of these nights, and on most of them, Cassian can convince himself that he does it for his comfort, or manages not to think about it at all.

Han flicks on the lights.

They’re too bright, illuminating the small space of Cassian’s crew quarters in harsh light that makes his temples ache. He doesn’t dare close his eyes, too afraid what he might see in the darkness, and tells himself that he welcomes the pain. Physical pain he knows how to handle.

He places his bare feet on the deck plates, lets the faint hum of Home One’s engines resonate through them. Cassian makes a conscious decision not to remember K-2SO’s frame hum under his hand, or wonder how the ship would have thrummed with Bodhi Rook at the helm.

“I saw them again,” he says quietly, his voice still hoarse with the screams he’s holding back. He’s been holding them back for a good long while now, and they only keep growing louder.

Cassian sits on the edge of the bed, hunched forward, forearms resting on his thighs, while Han pours them Corellian whiskey. That, too, is tradition

Han grabs the glasses, takes another look at Cassian and fetches the bottle instead. Cassian doesn’t comment on it.

“I should have died on Scarif. They say Jyn went there to die, but that’s a lie. I’m the only one who should have died on Scarif.”

He can read on Han’s face how much it still hurts him to hear that, but it’s the truth, and there is no more deception in Cassian. Not in his body language, not in the words he chooses, not even in merciful omissions.

They’ve both taken the plunge, and Cassian doesn’t back out once he commits himself.

Han had done it when Cassian told him he could only ever let himself love a rebel, and sent him packing. He’d left.

On the day he’d returned, Cassian had vowed there would be no more lies.

Sometimes he wonders if Han wishes he had asked for something less dangerous.

Han sits next to him and wordlessly hands him the bottle.

Cassian lets the whiskey burn down his throat. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. There’s only a faint tremble left now. “I still hate your Corellian swill.”

“We’ll find you some Festan swill then.”

He looks to Han, who says it so matter-of-factly as if Cassian weren’t in the middle of yet another breakdown betraying just how broken he is. He looks at him, and marvels, and then he laughs. He blinks against the sting in his eyes. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Sure.”

He watches Han drink, watches how he tilts back his head, the motions of his throat as he swallows. He takes the bottle from Han, empty now, and drops it to the floor. His lips take its place against Han’s.

Tonight, Han can make him forget.

In the morning, he will be leaving with the Millennium Falcon. There are too many blockades to run for the best smuggler ship in their fleet to ever sit idle, and Cassian will go back to drenching his hands in blood as if Scarif had never happened. Whatever sins he had hoped to wash away with the Death Star’s destruction, it feels like he’s collected twice as many since.

A spy can’t succeed on undercover missions anymore once every Imperial agent knows his face. But he can still pull a trigger.

“We have tonight,” he says, then moans when Han bites down hard on his neck. Hard enough to leave a mark.

“Not just tonight, I’d hope. I didn’t let you put me into that ugly uniform of yours for a single night,” Han scoffs. As if they haven’t had many nights already, and Cassian’s cause hasn’t become his own. As if Cassian could love him if it were otherwise. Too many things in his life are conditional. After everything he’s lost, he couldn’t survive it to love conditionally.

Cassian climbs onto his lap, and rolls his hips slowly, sweetly against Han’s till his breath comes in short little gasps, and he’s hardening against him. “Let me think about it while you’re away.”

Han smirks and opens his mouth, and oh, Cassian has no doubt it would have been witty, but he pushes and twists, and has Han on the bed, face down, arms pinned behind his back, before he has so much as uttered a single syllable of his wittiness.

“Still weak without your blaster,” he rasps into his ear, and then he nips the earlobe hard. He straddles Han, hard cock nudging against his ass cheeks, before he slips off him, and just sits there with a smirk while he watches Han gather his wounded scoundrel pride.

“You play dirty.”

Cassian gives him a pointed look. “Spy.”

Their eyes meet, and they laugh until their laughter is silenced by a kiss, and then Han yanks and twists and it is Cassian pinned to the thin mattress, and Cassian who has, “and I’m a scoundrel,” breathed into his ear with the air of smug victory.

Arousal floods him, burning hot and dizzying, and he bucks up into Han, not to throw him off, not even to fight, but just because he can, because he loves Han’s raspy, cocky laugh and the delicious illusion of surrender when Han pins him down with all his body weight.

“Jerk,” he hisses.

If this were a training exercise he would turn it around, or at the very least make Han pay a high and painful price to keep his victory. But this is not battle, it’s not even the rough, brittle sex of Cassian’s earliest days after Scarif, after Han delivered a princess and a Jedi to Massassi Base, and before he had committed to anything, least of all to Cassian. They had been vicious to another in these days.

Now here is Cassian growling, but only to encourage the slick fingers breaching his body. Now he is pressing his face into the pillow to stifle his moans just a moment longer, for Han’s cockiness will become unbearable if he gives in too easily.

For now, he can’t hear the screams.

It’s not getting better.

Tomorrow Han will risk his life out there, and Cassian will take other lives, and the war will rage on around them.

Tomorrow night, Cassian will wake to the dying screams of everybody he’s ever loved and lost, and Han won’t be there to remind him why he should be glad to have survived.

But this moment belongs to the living, and if he holds on firmly and closes his ears, he can believe that he, too, feels alive.


End file.
